World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Hong Kong was never a British colony, schoolchildren in the city will soon be taught. That may come as a surprise to the many parents who remember British governors, the Queen’s head on coins and stamps, and numerous other relics of a 150-year colonial presence. Behind the apparent absurdity is a…

With escalation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency at its height, amid Western statements that the Vienna negotiations have reached an impasse, the United States has not closed the door to diplomacy with Tehran, presenting it with a new opportunity, which may be the last before…

Is the war in Ukraine no more than a patch of cloud in an otherwise bright sky? This seems to be the Panglossian opinion of some elites in Western democracies who, like French President Emmanuel Macron, are anxious not to humiliate Vladimir Putin over a mere peccadillo. However, fact is that…

In commodity markets, there are few phenomena more feared than a corner. If a few traders become too dominant, they can at times set prices at will by withholding supply, driving values to ridiculous levels. That’s what happened when the Hunt brothers cornered the market in silver in 1980,…

This week, the crypto market plummeted for the second time in a month, in tandem with a sharp drop in global stock markets. The collapse, not the first of its kind, showed again how the violent swings of a largely unregulated market warp the development of a transformative technology. But crypto is…

Within hours of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last month, as President Biden flew home from a trip to Asia, he found himself wondering why liberal democracies like Australia, Canada and Britain can get gun violence under control, while America has tried for decades without success. “They…

Lebanon emerged victorious then, imposing Line 23 on Israel as the maritime borderline separating the two country’s economic zones. Lebanon’s victory, which would be added to the President and his resistance’s long list of achievements, hinges on overcoming a minor obstacle: getting Israel to…

Russian forces have bombed grain silos and farms and plundered Ukrainian wheat, which US diplomats say Moscow is now trying to sell on. Ukraine’s Black Sea ports are blocked by mines to protect the shoreline from attack by Russia’s navy, which is also bottling up shipments. And yet, if President…

Some people are naturally more decisive. These charge-ahead types make choices assuredly, from the trivial to the life-changing, stick to them and don’t look back. But do they make better decisions? It turns out that indecisive people don’t make worse decisions. In fact, the art of making good…

Over a decade ago, Elon Musk scoffed at the idea that China’s BYD Co. was a legitimate competitor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Now, Warren Buffett-backed BYD is set to wash out its closest rival in China, Tesla Inc. Last week, a BYD executive said that his company was “preparing to supply…

Last week, the chair of the bipartisan House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Bennie Thompson, opened the committee’s televised hearings by assigning moral responsibility to former President Donald Trump for “a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy” to overturn the presidential election…

As soon as Vladimir Putin likened himself to Peter the Great, Western press outlets began brimming with headlines about his comparison. The Russian president’s suggestion was understood to be glorifying Russia’s historical expansionist wars: what Peter captured from Sweden and other countries, he…